SurveyHost FAQ's
Click on a question to view the answer
- Do you charge by the number of responses?
- Can you add a logo or branding to my survey?
- Is your branding on my survey?
- Can I have questions on more than one page?
- Can I do skips and branching?
- Can I bring in data from other applications, like addresses?
- Can I have surveys in languages other than English?
- What about custom programming, like quotas or complex skips?
- How do I invite respondents to take my survey?
- How do I control access to my survey?
- How secure is my data with SurveyHost?
- How long does it take to get a survey online?
- Do I get to review my survey before it goes online?
- How do I get my data?
- Do I need SurveyPro?
- What hours is my survey accessible to respondents?
Do you charge by the number of responses?
No, the majority of our service is in the initial setup of the survey, so that is the basis of our pricing. There are additional charges for surveys collecting over 10,000 responses/forms per week, but that's not an issue for most projects. Your quote will reflect the full price of the project as specified.
Back to top ^Can you add a logo or branding to my survey?
Yes, definitely! Part of our service is creating the questionnaire to your specifications, including what you'd like in terms of branding, images, or emulating the style of a website. We send you a few questions after your contracts are signed, asking for your preferences with design and layout.
Back to top ^Is your branding on my survey?
No. There is no Apian or SurveyHost branding required on your survey. The only exceptions to this are the URL, which will include "surveyhost.com," and we put a small SurveyHost logo on the Thanks page (the last page of the survey). That logo can be removed upon no request at no additional charge.
Back to top ^Can I have questions on more than one page?
Yes. Instead of a single survey page, the questionnaire is broken into pages suitable for ease of use in standard web browsers. You can specify where the page breaks should appear, or leave it to the developers.
Back to top ^Can I do skips and branching?
Yes, and they can be quite complex. Skips are used when you want to jump respondents past questions that don't apply - "If no, go to question 14." Branches are "includes" - the show respondents all the questions that apply based on earlier selections - i.e. "Select all appliances you've purchased in the last 5 years", and then they see a page of questions for each appliance selected.
They do need to go in one direction only - no looping back to earlier questions. But we're available to help you figure out the best way to show each respondent the right path of questions.
Technically, the survey software offers sophisticated handling of the skip/branch logic. Respondents can navigate forward and back through the survey, and all their answers on all pages are preserved until they click "Submit" on the final page of the survey. At that point, the survey software finds the one valid path the respondent finally chose through the survey and "scrubs" all the data from pages that became invalid.
Back to top ^Can I bring in data from other applications, like addresses?
Yes, we call this "piping." You can bring in data such as passwords, names, addresses, which URL the respondent clicked on to take the survey, etc. The data can be piped in via the URL, from a file, or from earlier answers in the survey to later pages.
Back to top ^Can I have surveys in languages other than English?
Absolutely. Both single and double-byte languages (this means we can do Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic, as well as standard Windows character set languages like Spanish). We've conducted surveys in ten or more languages, or just two such as English and French. You provide the translation of the text and we build the survey. There is also a file of error messages and button text we will provide you with, that you will translate into the languages you are using.
The project flow for a multiple-language project involves a bit more development time. We create the English version first, and send it to you for your testing and approval. Once the English is exactly as you want it, we create the other languages.
Back to top ^What about custom programming, like demographic quotas or complex skips?
Custom work is a factor in many clients' choice to use SurveyHost services. We can do custom programming for most things clients ask for. Just tell us what you'd like it to do, and we'll provide a quote and details on programming options. Please see the Features and Services page for more information on our common offerings.
Back to top ^How do I invite respondents to take my survey?
You can send email invitations, link to it from a website, print the URL on receipts, or even mail letters or postcards. If using email invitations, you can send them or we can send them. There is some information on current legislation about email available on the Emails and Spam page, or information on our emailing services on our Acceptable Uses Policy page.
Back to top ^How do I control access to my survey?
For some surveys, you may wish to publish the URL everywhere you can and hope for the maximum possible response rate. Other surveys may be targeted at a select group of respondents. There are three ways you can restrict access to a survey:
- Use a password to control access to the survey. You can choose between one global password, multiple shared passwords (can accept multiple submissions from each password), individual passwords, or even name/password combinations. With unique passwords you can restrict each respondent to a single answer.
- Use a cookie to discourage multiple submissions from the same computer. This is at best a casual block, as cookies can be refused or deleted.
- Hide the URL. If you do not link to the survey from a website, only the people to whom you give the exact location will be able to find it.
How secure is my data with SurveyHost?
Apian considers all client projects to be confidential and handles them as such. We regard both respondent contact lists and the data collected by the surveys to be our clients' intellectual property, and will never use them except as explicitly requested by our designated contact(s).
All data transfer between our office computers and production Web servers is encrypted, and we maintain several levels of security on both sites. This includes firewalls, antivirus, regular patching, strong passwords, and restricted permissions depending on the user's responsibilities within Apian.
For SurveyHost, our staff is managing your project, so the data will reside on both the production Web servers and our LAN server (as well as backups for both). By default, we archive all client projects for at least one year, including the survey pages, correspondence, and data. We are happy to modify our base agreement to include a no archive clause, or to wipe any aspects of those archives upon request. If you do require the archives be wiped, we can provide you with the source files that we would need to re-launch the survey down the road (updating and re-launching projects is the primary use of the archives).
There is more information on our Confidentiality and Security page. Back to top ^
How long does it take to get a survey online?
This depends on the length and complexity of your survey, and on what else is on our development calendar at the time when you are ready to sign contracts. Advance planning can ensure the exact launch date you would like. Or, if you find you have a last-minute crisis, we can also do rush jobs in many cases. The time to get a survey online can range from a day or two to several weeks, depending on the project.
Back to top ^Do I get to review my survey before it goes online?
Our testing period is designed to ensure a smooth experience for respondents and data you can use to analyze your project. We provide you with a link to your survey and control panel. You then can take the survey multiple times, check all custom work, evaluate the design, and download and import data.
The SurveyHost staff tests your project internally before submitting it to you for review and sign-off. When you're testing the project it is on the web (in test mode) so you can have the same experience as the respondents and demo it to others in your organization. The data will not be retained when we make your survey live so you don't have to worry about filtering your test answers from your import file.
Back to top ^How do I get my data?
You can download your data from your own secure control panel 24/7. If you are a SurveyPro4 user, you can download it in .sdh format. If not, the data is in .csv (ASCII) format. We also provide an import map for bringing the data into another application.
Back to top ^Do I need SurveyPro?
No, SurveyPro is entirely optional. You can send your survey as a Word doc and get your data as .csv. If you have SurveyPro and elect to do the initial development of your survey yourself, you will save on conversion charges. Some clients also send Word docs of their surveys and then use SurveyPro to do their reporting. The mix of software used is up to you.
Back to top ^What hours is my survey accessible to respondents?
All the time. In addition to redundant power and data backups, three high-speed connections via different communications services (Sprint, MCI and UUnet) ensure it always has reliable connections to the Internet. There is more information about uptime on our Confidentiality and Security page.
